Abstract
Automatic geocoding methods have become popular in recent years, facilitating the study of the association between health outcomes and the place of living. However, rather few studies have evaluated geocoding quality, with most of them being performed in the US and Europe. This article aims to compare the quality of three automatic online geocoding tools against a reference method. A subsample of 300 handwritten addresses from hospital records was geocoded using Bing, Google Earth, and Google Maps. Match rates were higher (> 80%) for Google Maps and Google Earth compared with Bing. However, the accuracy of the addresses was better for Bing with a larger proportion (> 70%) of addresses with positional errors below 20m. Generally, performance did not vary for each method for different socioeconomic status. Overall, the methods showed an acceptable, but heterogeneous performance, which may be a warning against the use of automatic methods without assessing quality in other municipalities, particularly in Chile and Latin America.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e00288920 |
| Journal | Cadernos de Saude Publica |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
AcknowledgmentsImpact of Wood Burning Air Pollution on Preeclampsia and other Pregnancy Outcomes in Temuco, Chile (DPI20140093) was garanted by CONICYT and Research Councils UK. J. M. Delgado-Saborit is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement n. 750531. M. E. Quinteros and S. Ayala were supported by a doctoral scholarship by CONICYT Chile Beca Doctorado Nacional n. 21150801 and n. 21191111, respectively.
Keywords
- Geographic Mapping
- Residence Characteristics
- Spatial Analysis
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
